is
man--no, such am I! I did not want to undergo the pain of seeing my
mother's grave. I looked over the burial-ground hedge; but I did not go
inside, and travelled back again without having seen the grave. Such am
I, so good or so bad; I believe they are one and the same thing. I
travelled through Greece and Egypt, and was in Algiers. I have led a
life of utterly unbridled excess, and have done every thing to
undermine my vital power, but have failed to accomplish it. I have an
iron, indestructible constitution. I was in England, the land of
respectability. It may be that I have a special eye to see them; but I
saw everywhere nothing but masks, hypocrisy, conventionalism. I took
ship for America. You will laugh when I tell you that I meant to join
the Mormons, and yet such is the fact. These people have the courage
and honesty to ordain polygamy by law, while in the rest of the world
it exists under a lying disguise. But I was not suited to that
community. I soon returned to New York, and there I found the
high-school and the Olympus of gamblers. The fast livers of Paris and
London are bunglers compared with the Yankees. It was the fashion to
declaim against the Southern chivalry; but I have found among them
truly heroic natures, of the stuff out of which conquering Rome was
built up. Only he who has been in America knows what the being that
calls himself man is in reality. Every thing there is reckless,
untramelled. They only dissemble in the matter of religion, that's
respectable."

Eric and Weidmann looked at each other. Weidmann had given expression
to the same thought a few days before at Mattenheim, but in a wholly
different connection.

Sonnenkamp went on.

"My five passes were still good. I went here under the name of Count
Gronau: the Americans are fond of intercourse with noblemen. After a
wild night, I shot a man who had insulted me on the public street. I
fled, and lived for a time among the horse-thieves of Arkansas. It was
a droll life, a life of craft and adventure that nowhere else has its
like. Man becomes there a lurking beast of prey, and my body underwent
the most monstrous experiences. I left this partnership, and became a
sailor on a whaling-ship. I had shot lions and leopards in Algiers, and
now I was hunting the king of the ocean. The whole world is here only
to be captured and subdued. I have been through all sorts of
experience. I soon gained dexterity enough to reach the position of
bo